I Believe in You

One day, a lady with blue-white hair, dressed in similar colors of white and light blue with streaks of silver and the clinks of armor to boot... was given a brother. He was small, a child, and quiet. He came without a name, and at first the lady had half a mind to call him 'Emerald' if only because his eyes were big and deep just like the precious jewel of that name.

He was silent because he couldn't talk. She found that a little funny, and asked her mother why, at the age of six, the boy couldn't speak. The answer she was given was, "No one taught him to." It was confusing for the lady, but she accepted it anyway, and held out her hand for him to take.

He took it. He accepted. It began.

***

He never thought he'd be the one to survive this clash.
After all, from day one, she was always stronger than he was.
In every way that mattered.

***

"They're called 'rhododendrons'." Hepatica held her baby brother around his waist, smiling as she watched him reach up at the white flowers with his small hands. Childlike wonder in the face of nature - nature that their home planet, Gaeya, did not know of. She didn't blame him. "They're a symbol of hope." Poking his cheek a little, eliciting a small smile from the boy, she grinned. "Kind of like you."

Those eyes looked up at her from the flower. Confusion was on his face, open and raw. Her smile turned a little more somber. She was two thousand years older than he; so of course he didn't know. "Fate says that someone born from the Shadows and Fires will bring hope to the Worlds... will rise up from the ashes of the fallen kingdoms to stop Ruination in its tracks," she told him, though no comprehension dawned on his face. In fact, he looked a little starstruck, a child listening to a fairy tale.

Though she knew, just by looking at him, who the one born of both Fires and Shadows would be. While she was praised for her strength of spirit, will power, sheer force of her fists, everything... she could see in these green depths the unshakable morals, kindness, compassion... the absolute opposite of the Shadows he one day would represent. The strength to be different. He would stand above her, as she fell. She knew it already, she accepted it.

"You're my hope... Rhododendron." From that day on, he had a name.

***

He failed her. He couldn't protect her. He failed her. Them. Everyone.
Even though her stained red lips smiled, he didn't believe the words she spoke.
He never did.

***

"You know, I believe in you." There is was. An inflection in her voice. Rhododendron always caught it, though he never said anything about it. He knew she didn't mean it in the way it came out. Not a question. Never a question. She'd proven over all the millennia they had lived, from the day he was christened Rhododendron to the day he spoke his first word, that she believed in him. But they were older now. So much older. They'd lived a mortal life together, a life full of mistakes, the downturn of all the Worlds, caused by the silly antics of Rhododendron wanting to save a race of demigods, and getting all but a scarce few killed.

In spite of that, she proclaimed to believe in him. Consciously, she meant it. But that little high note at the end of the sentence subconsciously spoke of a question. Did she really believe in him? So he would ask. Hepatica would look up from her ledger she would work at, and blink. "Yes really."

"Why?"

Then came the look. They'd had the conversation a lot in the past, and somehow she always had something to flick at him from her side of the desk, bed, table, lawn, tree branch... from wherever.

"Because you're worth believing in. Silly Rhodio."

***

She believed in him when he destroyed all of her home, her family, as a mortal. She stated so.
She believed in him when his unshakable morals shattered, all in the name of love and keeping loved ones alive. She stated so.
She believed in him as he staggered, bleeding from various points on his body after fighting so many for so long. She stated so.
But she was afraid for him. He wasn't what she or the others thought, he heard and saw so.
She was lying through her teeth, even if she herself didn't know it.

***

"I'm not that silent boy anymore, Hepatica." He told it to her once, straight, sitting folded in a chair across from her. Strain was evident on his features; his addiction to physical pleasures had killed him on the inside. He'd sacrificed so much, for everyone he loved, only to lose them all in the end. How many times had it happened now? A lot. He wondered was it worth it to keep hoping? Keep waiting? Waiting did nothing. Chasing only hurt more and more.

Hepatica didn't comfort the folded man in front of her... but she did flick a sugar cube at his face, smiling at his blink and startled look of bewilderment.

"Of course you aren't, Rhode. That's what it means to grow up."

But Rhododendron doesn't understand. He's never been very good at looking between the lines, or reading the gestures from other people. So instead of trying, he just ignores it, blurs it out, puts himself above Hepatica all the time, every time. In return, she refuses to look down on him as tainted, used, broken, and nothing what he used to be. He's grown up.

***

His soul is clouded, and he can't see through the murk.
But she still sees the best of things in him, and refuses to ever think different.
Or stop telling him about it.
Even as her breath rattled in her chest, wheezing, dying.

***

"You know, I believe in you." Bloodied fingers clench his dark shirt, cestus clinking as it falls from her hands to hit the ground.

"But why?" he asks, their long-time old conversation, now with a hint of desperation in his voice. Rhododendron's hands twitch, the fingers scrambling. Trying to make the Shadows press to her innumerable wounds, stop the blood. Anything to keep her Fires from going out. Anything, anything... "I've failed you. Time and time again." His voice cracks into a sob.

Hepatica's bloodied lips, smiling, now frown. "No you haven't. You never have failed me, Rhode."

"Yes I have, Hepatica! I've failed everyone! You're just too blind to see it, when it's right in front of me!"

"You accepted my hand," she murmurs, before her breaths begin to peter off into pained wheezes, her skin pale with so much blood staining the once-pure Arcadian ground. The heavenly afterlife was quickly turning into hell around them, pristine light burning away in the flames of destruction. "So... so for that... I believe... in you. Your... strength... lies..." She coughed, her eyes sliding half-closed.

Panic seizes Rhode's throat as gems fall from those deep green eyes.

***

She never thought she'd live to see him cry emeralds.

***

"Hepatica!"

"...in acceptance." Her fingers slacken, and silence begins to fall like a wave of wind over once-green grass. "So you're... so very... strong... and... and... worth believing in."

Her heartbeat ends, and she passes on, in the arms of her beloved baby brother, surrounded by the prettiest gems she's always coveted since first seeing them, all those thousands of years ago.

Rhododendron holds the blue, white, silver... and red body. He burrows his face into her soft hair, petting it, murmuring incoherently amongst sobs, and rocking her cooling body amongst the rubble, until Aiden and the others find him.

***

Your strength lies in acceptance.
You accepted fate, you accepted me.
So accept this one last thing.

I believe in you.